The first day of the year is attractive for English-speaking unions. On 1 January 1801 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was proclaimed. A century later on 1 January 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia opened for business. But the Americans beat them both.
In 1776 General George Washington hoisted the first US flag, the Grand Union Flag, at Prospect Hill in Massachusetts. General Washington’s flag had a Union Jack where the Stars now sing. Almost. The canton – the rectangle in a flag’s top left corner – lacked the red saltire of St Patrick. As we have just seen, Great Britain’s union with Ireland was a quarter century down the track.
This has at least one cultural consequence for the confused and the curious. When the Royal Navy’s Captain Vancouver met Hawaii’s King Kamehameha I in 1793, the Captain presented him with the red ensign to seal a friendship with Captain Vancouver’s ultimate boss, King George III. That ensign, of course, bore the pre-1801 canton used by Washington. This presentation is preserved in the current canton of Hawaii’s state flag. Kind of. The current canton is the current, ie post-1801 Union Jack.
Other 1 January unions of note are 1898, when New York consolidated itself into the five boroughs we know today and became World City Number Two after London; 1958, the EEC; 1994, NAFTA; 1995, the WTO; and 1999, the Euro currency unit.
One to watch is 2015, the formation of the EEU, the Eurasian Economic Union of Russia, Belarus & Kazakhstan. Armenia joined the next day and Kyrgyzstan later in the year. It has a commission, a court and a budget; a parliament and a common currency have been flagged. Stay tuned.